Tribune of the Trial Lawyers
By Grover Norquist
On June 28, the United States transferred power from the occupying coalition to the Iraqi provisional government led by Iyad Allawi.
A little more than a week later, John Kerry's selection of North Carolina senator John Edwards as his running mate signaled a formal power transfer of a different kind: the handover of the Democratic Party from Organized Labor to Trial Lawyers. Neither of the other building blocks of the Democratic Party were in a position to assume control: The solid South has joined the other team, and the African-American vote, though the largest Democratic voting group, has only been employed to row the Demo-cratic boat, not invited to steer.
John Edwards' status as the tribune of the small-but-wealthy-and-powerful trial lawyer class is his only asset. He doesn't bring a state to the ticket, as Lyndon Johnson did with Texas in 1960. He doesn't bring ideological balance as Joe Lieberman did for the more liberal Gore; as Nixon did for Eisenhower; and as George H. W. Bush did for Reagan.
In fact, Edwards is running for Vice President partly because his left-of-center voting record would have made it difficult for him to get elected to a second term. While John Kerry was rated the most liberal senator by National Journal, Edwards was tied for second most liberal with two others--Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer.
And Edwards doesn't bring gravitas or experience. He had no political role before his now less-than-one term as senator.
The selection of Edwards has energized the sleepy part of the center-right coalition--businessmen and women, the self-employed, and professionals like doctors. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced that while it has never bothered to make an endorsement in a Presidential campaign in the past, it is making one against the trial lawyer Edwards. The Democrat who runs the National Association of Manufacturers is doing the same.
Republican politicians in the 1940s and '50s used to rail against the labor union bosses. At that time, strikes paralyzed whole industries and regions, and one third of the workforce was paying union dues. Union membership as a percentage of the entire workforce has fallen from 20 percent in 1980 to 13.5 percent today (encompassing 33 percent of government workers and 8 percent of private sector workers).
Few small businessmen or professionals wake up fearing that their three employees will join a labor union. But every businessman or woman, every self-employed doctor, nurse, or professional, has a very real fear that a baseless lawsuit could cost thousands of dollars and days out of his or her life. Labor unions drain $8 billion in dues from workers forced to pay dues; trial lawyers extract $200 billion from the economy and keep $40 billion for themselves.
While the Edwards selection energizes congenital Republicans in the small business community, Kerry's greatest danger may come from John Edwards' natural enemies in the Democratic Party--every single Democrat who hopes someday to be President himself. If Kerry wins, the Presidency is closed to other Democrats in 2008 as Kerry runs for re-election. Edwards, who has parlayed a four-year stint in the Senate into a Presidential bid and Vice Presidential nomination, is fully capable of using eight years as Vice President to lock up the Democratic nomination in 2012.
This contrasts with the incentives the Bush-Cheney ticket gives to all Republicans with Presidential ambitions. They know Cheney's health problems leave an open seat for Republicans in 2008, assuming a Bush-Cheney victory this November. A loss, on the other hand, means a fight upstream against a Democratic incumbent.
Edwards' one asset against the near and far enemies he motivates is his ability to raise trial-lawyer dollars. Those funds might allow the Democratic ticket to forgo public funds in the last months of the campaign. Should the additional money allow Kerry and Edwards to win, there will be no doubt who is in charge of the modern Democratic Party, and perhaps the nation.
